A Mighty Fortress (4 page)

He didn’t know what thoughts were going through the minds of the rest of the crowd, but he could sense the way the entire mob was settling back on its heels, losing the forward momentum which had carried it down the street. Some of the people in it—including some of Charlz’s friends—were still shouting, yet their voices had lost much of their fervor. They sounded shriller, more isolated, as if those voices’ owners felt their own certainty oozing away.

Charlz took his hand away from the truncheon under his tunic and was a bit surprised to discover he was actually more relieved than regretful at the way things had so unexpectedly shifted.

He started to turn away, then paused, his eyes widening in shock, as the man who’d just walked up behind him brought something out from under his own tunic.

Charlz had never seen one of the new “flintlocks” which had been introduced into the Corisandian Army, but he recognized what he had to be seeing now. It was a short, squat weapon—a musket whose stock had been cut down and whose barrel had been sawn down to no more than a couple of feet. It was still far bigger and clumsier than the pistols which equipped the Charisian Imperial Guard, and it must have been extraordinarily difficult to keep it hidden, but the flintlock which had been fitted in place of its original matchlock didn’t need a clumsy, smoldering, impossible- to- hide, lit slow match. That had probably helped a lot where concealing it was concerned, a corner of Charlz’s mind thought almost calmly.

He watched, frozen, as the weapon rose. It poked over the shoulder of another young man, no more than a year or so older than Charlz himself, standing beside him. The other young man twitched in astonishment, turning his head, looking across and down at the muzzle as it intruded into the corner of his field of vision... just as the man holding it squeezed the trigger.

The sudden gunshot took everyone by surprise, even experienced noncoms like Waistyn and Maigee. Perhaps it shouldn’t have taken the sergeants unaware, but Tahlas’ obvious success in calming the crowd had lulled even them just a bit, as well.

The man behind that musket had marked the Marine lieutenant as his target. Fortunately for Brahd Tahlas, however, no one would ever have described the would- be murderer’s weapon as a precision instrument. It was a smoothbore, with a very
short
barrel, and loaded with meal powder, not corned powder. Less than a quarter of the slow- burning, anemic propellant had actually been consumed before the rest was flung out of the barrel in a huge, blinding cloud, and the bullet’s flight could only be characterized as . . . erratic.

The unfortunate young man who’d been looking at the muzzle at the moment it was fired screamed in agony as his face was savagely burned. He staggered back, clutching at his permanently blinded eyes, and four or five more people who’d been unlucky enough to be standing directly in front of him cried out in pain of their own as blazing flakes of gunpowder seared “coalminer’s tattoos” into the backs of their necks. One especially luckless soul actually had his hair set on fire and went to his knees, howling in panic and pain as he beat at the flames with both hands.

Charlz Dobyns was far enough away to escape with only minor singeing, and his head snapped around, looking for the musket’s target.

“Shit.”

Lieutenant Tahlas wondered if Platoon Sergeant Maigee even realized he’d spoken out loud. The single word was pitched almost conversationally, after all. Not that it was going to make a lot of difference.

The musket ball had almost certainly been meant for him, the lieutenant realized, but it hadn’t found him. Instead, it had slammed into the chest of one of his privates, a good four feet to his right. The Marine went down, clutching at the front of his suddenly bloody tunic, and Tahlas realized something else. Major Portyr’s orders had been perfectly explicit on the matter of what Tahlas was supposed to do if firearms or edged weapons were used against any of his troops.

“Fix bayonets!” he heard his own voice command, and the men of his platoon obeyed.

He saw many of those in the crowd suddenly trying to back away as steel clicked and the long, shining blades sprouted from the ends of his Marines’ rifles. Some of them managed it; others found their escape blocked by the mass of bodies behind them, and still others reacted quite differently. Expressions snarled, truncheons and clubs came out from under tunics, and the front of the mob seemed to solidify somehow, drawing together. It seemed clear the people in those front ranks were ready for a fight.

For now,
Brahd Tahlas thought grimly.
For
now,
perhaps
.

He looked at his bleeding private, and his jaw tightened as his expression hardened into something far less youthful than his years. He’d seen dead men enough at Talbor Pass. He looked away again, meeting Maigee’s eye, and his youthful voice was a thing of hammered iron.

“Sergeant Maigee, clear the street!” he said.

Maikelberg,

Duchy of Eastshare,

Kingdom of Chisholm

So,” General Sir Kynt Clareyk, Imperial Charisian Army, late Brigadier Clareyk of the Imperial Charisian Marines and recently knighted and ennobled as the Baron of Green Valley, said as he poured wine into his guest’s cup, “what do you think,
Seijin
Merlin?”

“Of what, My Lord?” the tall, blue- eyed Imperial Guardsman in the black and gold of the House of Ahrmahk asked mildly.

He picked up his cup and sipped appreciatively. Clareyk’s taste in wine had always been good, and his promotion hadn’t changed the ex- Marine in that respect. Or in any other respect that Merlin Athrawes could see. He was still the same competent officer he’d always been, with the same willingness to roll up his sleeves and dig into a new assignment. The tent in which they currently sat while icy autumn rain pounded down against its (nominally) waterproofed canvas canopy was evidence of that. The day after tomorrow would be Cayleb and Sharleyan Ahrmahk’s first anniversary, which also made it the anniversary of the creation of the Empire of Charis, and Merlin couldn’t help comparing the chill, wet misery outside Green Valley’s tent to the brilliant sunshine, tropical heat, and flowers of that wedding day.

The difference was . . . pronounced, and while Green Valley might be a mere baron, and one of the Empire’s most recently created peers to boot (he’d held his new title for less than four five- days, after all), it was no secret Emperor Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan both thought very highly of him. In fact, it was no secret that he’d been hauled back to Chisholm from the newly conquered (more or less) Princedom of Corisande precisely
because
of how highly they regarded him. Given all of that, one might reasonably have assumed that a man with his connections could have found comfortable quarters in the nearby city of Maikelberg rather than ending up stuck under canvas with winter coming on quickly.

And a
northern
winter, at that,
Merlin thought dryly, glancing at the large, dripping spot in one corner of the tent where its roof’s theoretical waterproofing had proved unequal to the heavy rain.
He’s a southern boy, when all’s said and done, and he’s not going to enjoy winter in Chisholm one bit. The rain’s bad enough, but there’s worse coming. Snow? What’s
that
?!

Which, as Merlin understood perfectly well, was the real reason Green Valley had taken up residence in this tent instead of a luxurious town house, or at least a comfortable room in one of the city’s more respectable inns. An awful lot of other Charisian ex- Marines were about to spend a Chisholmian winter under less than ideal conditions, and Green Valley wouldn’t be moving out of his tent until the last man under his command had been provided with dry,
warm
space of his own in the barracks being hastily thrown up.

“ ‘Of what,’ is it?” the general repeated now, sitting back in his folding camp chair beside the cast- iron stove which was doing its best—successfully, at the moment—to maintain a fairly comfortable temperature inside the tent. “Now, let me see . . . what could I
possibly
have been asking about? Hmmm....”

He frowned in obvious, difficult thought, scratching his chin with his eyes screwed half- shut, and Merlin chuckled. There weren’t all that many people on the planet of Safehold who felt comfortable enough with the fearsome
Seijin
Merlin to give him grief, and he treasured the ones who did.

“All right, My Lord!” He acknowledged defeat with a grin, then let the grin fade slowly. “Actually,” he went on in a considerably more serious tone, “I’ve been impressed. You and Duke Eastshare seem to be managing the integration process even more smoothly and quickly than Their Majesties had anticipated. It’s my impression that you’re basically comfortable with the emerging command relationships, as well.”

His tone made the final sentence a question, and Green Valley snorted.

“I’d expected a somewhat more . . . visionary comment out of you, Merlin,” he said. “In fact, I’m a little surprised His Majesty felt it was necessary to send you all the way up here to look things over with your own eyes, as it were.”

Merlin managed not to wince, although that was coming to the point with a vengeance. On the other hand, it was a reasonable enough observation, given that Green Valley was one of the relatively small number of people who knew
Seijin
Merlin was far more than merely Emperor Cayleb Ahrmahk’s personal armsman and bodyguard.

Over the last few years, virtually everyone in what had become the Empire of Charis had learned that all of the old fables and fairy tales about the legendary
seijin
warrior- monks were not only true, but actually understated their lethality. There was absolutely no question in anyone’s mind that
Seijin
Merlin was the most deadly bodyguard any Charisian monarch had ever possessed. Given the number of assassination attempts he’d thwarted, and not just on the emperor, it was no wonder he was kept constantly at Cayleb’s back, watching over him, protecting him both in the council chamber and on the field of battle.

But what Green Valley knew—and very few of his fellow Charisians even suspected—was that Cayleb and Sharleyan had another and very special reason for keeping Merlin so close.

The
seijin
had visions. He could see and hear far distant events, know what was happening thousands of miles away even as it happened. His ability to literally sit in on the war councils and political deliberations of Charis’ enemies was a priceless advantage for the beleaguered empire, and his role as Cayleb’s bodyguard was a perfect cover. He truly was the deadly and efficient guardian everyone thought he was, but that very deadliness provided ample reason for his permanent proximity to Cayleb and Sharleyan. After all, not even a
seijin
could protect someone from an assassin if he wasn’t there to do the protecting, now could he? And so any potentially suspicious souls understood exactly why Captain Athrawes, with his eyes of “unearthly
seijin
blue,” was constantly at the emperor’s elbow, and it obviously had nothing at all to do with visions. Merlin was a bodyguard, not an adviser and an oracle. Any village idiot could figure
that
much out!

Green Valley knew better than that. Indeed, he’d come to suspect that Merlin was as much mentor as adviser. That most of the radical innovations which had provided the margin—so far—for Charis’ survival in the face of its enemies’ overwhelming numerical advantages had come from the
seijin
’s “suggestions” to the Charisians who had actually developed them into workable propositions. The baron suspected that for the excellent reason that he’d
been
one of those Charisians. It had been Green Valley, as a major in the Royal Charisian Marines, who’d played the lead role in developing revolutionary new infantry tactics built around the field artillery and rifled flintlock muskets which had “just happened” to appear in Charis shortly after one Merlin Athrawes’ arrival. He’d worked closely with Merlin in the process of accomplishing that task, and they’d worked even more closely together, in many ways, during the Corisande campaign. In fact, the victory which had won Green Valley his title (and his knighthood) and sealed Prince Hektor of Corisande’s defeat had been possible only because Merlin had revealed his ability to see visions to him.